WND EXCLUSIVE

Congressman: 'We do have what's called impeachment'

Contends House speaker's lawsuit likely won't stop Obama

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

The Constitution provides for impeachment when a president exceeds his authority, and it’s a provision that should be used, according to a member of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., told WTIB’s “Talk of the Town” program that House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to sue Barack Obama in court probably is a non-starter.

“Use the Constitution,” he said on the Greenville, North Carolina, radio program this week. “That’s what it’s there for.”

Discussion about bringing impeachment charges against Obama has been around for years. It’s increased in intensity in recent months because of the piling on of scandals, including Fast and Furious, the IRS, the immigration catastrophe on the southern border, attacks against conservatives and tea party members, Benghazi, Bowe Bergdahl and multiple changes to the Obamacare law without any participation from Congress.

Jones’ comments make him just the latest to join the conversation.

“I am one that believes sincerely that the Constitution says that when a president, be it a Republican or a Democrat, when a president exceeds his authority and you can’t stop the president from exceeding his authority then we do have what’s called impeachment,” he told the station.

“You can thank Alexander Hamilton,” Jones said. “He felt that the Congress needed to use this process to get the attention of a president. And if the president had lost the public trust then move forward in that area. A lot of people – you know, we recently had a vote to go to federal courts. I did not vote for that, Mike. I was one of five.”

He explained he’s already gone to court twice against a sitting president, first Bill Clinton and then Obama, and in neither situation did the case get very far.

Jones said he had lunch with Jonathan Turley, the constitutional law professor at George Washington University, to discuss the lawsuit. They were joined by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., former former Republican congressman Ron Paul, former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich and two other Democrats.

“We held a news conference in front of the federal court in Washington, D.C.,” Jones said. “Turley said I think we’ve got a pretty good shot to get this through the court system – George Washington University will pay for it. We did not get very far in the courts. My problem with what my party is trying to do, to sue, will cost the taxpayers between $2 and $3 million. Use the Constitution, that’s what its there for.”

Comments are at about the 14:00 mark:

The Big List:

Impeachment talk even has come from the White House.

According to Reuters, Dan Pfeiffer, a top adviser for Barack Obama, says the president’s planned executive orders on immigration will make Republicans in Congress very unhappy.

The comments came at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor.

“The president acting on immigration reform will certainly up the likelihood that they would contemplate impeachment,” the report quoted Pfeiffer saying.

He said it would be “foolish” to overlook the possibility.

Pfeiffer said he can see Republicans moving toward impeachment, according to the report, “in retaliation for the immigration orders he is expected to unveil by the end of the summer.”

The comments came just as a new poll indicated nearly half of Americans believe Obama has “gone too far” in expanding his power, and one-third of all voters believe he “should be impeached and removed from office.”

The results are from a new CNN/ORC Poll that interviewed 1,012 adult Americans July 18-20. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Some 45 percent of respondents said Obama has gone too far, and 33 percent said he should be impeached. Very few people were unaware of Obama’s controversies and scandals, with only 1 percent responding with no opinion.

Just a few weeks ago, another poll, by YouGov and the Huffington Post, found more than a third of all Americans “and two-thirds of Republicans” say “Congress would be justified in bringing impeachment proceedings against President Obama.”

According to a Huffington Post report on his campaign, Miller said: “Sarah Palin is right; it’s time to impeach this president for dereliction of duty, selectively enforcing the law, and usurping powers that the Constitution does not authorize. He is willfully undermining the rule of law and creating chaos.”

The idea has been gaining traction across America. For example, the South Dakota Republican Party passed a resolution at its state convention calling for Obama’s impeachment.

The resolution says Obama has violated his oath of office, citing the release of five Taliban combatants in a trade for captive U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl and the president’s statement that people could keep their health insurance companies. It also cites recent Environmental Protection Agency regulations on power plants.

And talk-radio star Dr. Savage recently said: “I believe we should impeach Obama. It doesn’t matter whether Harry Reid lets a motion to impeach go forward or not. Merely bringing the charge of impeachment will slow down if not stop Obama’s agenda entirely.”

In a fiery discourse on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Levin was discussing the crisis of illegal alien children that has developed on Obama’s watch along with other problems.

“Sarah Palin is right. If we had a functioning constitutional republic with a president who violates the separation of powers, thumbs his nose at the court system … and says he’s going to do more and more of it, she’s exactly right,” he said.

“This would be an open and shut case,” he said. “Wait for the next election? That doesn’t fix it.”

Levin, a constitutional lawyer who has been adviser to Rush Limbaugh and is contributing editor for National Review Online, was chief of staff to the attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.

He accused Obama of not establishing an agenda, strategy, policy or plan, but “chaos” and “anarchy.”

Palin, the GOP vice presidential candidate in 2008, says the immigration crisis Obama has created along the southwestern U.S. border is the tipping point, and she believes it now is time to bring impeachment articles against the president.

“It is time,” she told Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday. “A great awakening is due in this country … [that] he is not an imperial president and lawlessness will not be accepted by the American people.”

She cited a long list of the scandals under Obama but said the “tipping point” has been the “illegal immigration crisis created by Obama.”

“Impeachment is a message that has to be sent to the president,” she said, citing the president’s “lies.”

She rejected the suggestion that impeachment would be a losing issue for Republicans, insisting it would be bipartisan.

“Without borders, there is no nation. Obama knows this. Opening our borders to a flood of illegal immigrants is deliberate. This is his fundamental transformation of America. It’s the only promise he has kept. Discrediting the price paid for America’s exceptionalism over our history, he’s given false hope and taxpayer’s change to millions of foreign nationals who want to sneak into our country illegally.”

She continued: “President Obama’s rewarding of lawlessness, including his own, is the foundational problem here. It’s not going to get better, and in fact irreparable harm can be done in this lame-duck term as he continues to make up his own laws as he goes along, and, mark my words, will next meddle in the U.S. court system with appointments that will forever change the basic interpretation of our Constitution’s role in protecting our rights.

“It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment,” she said.

“The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

“The problem is, what do you do? … For those who say impeach him for breaking the laws or not enforcing the laws, you know. Could that pass, in the House? It probably, it probably could. Are the majority of American people in favor of impeaching President Obama? I’m not sure,” he said.

“I think what happened in Virginia is what you’re going to start seeing around the country. … They’re going to look at their specific member of Congress and their own U.S. senator. If they don’t feel you’re standing up for them, they’re going to throw you out and they’re going to send somebody else there.”

He noted a House majority leader had never been defeated in a primary.

The fact that Washington has serious problems was confirmed by Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer.

Referencing the White House claim that IRS emails sought by investigators looking into harassment of tea-party members and conservatives were “lost,” he said, “These guys are living on a different planet.”

He noted computer experts said they are retrievable, but the Obama administration doesn’t want people to see them.

“Nixon lost 18 minutes. Obama now has lost two years of email,” he said. “One thing that people don’t remember, the second article of impeachment for Richard Nixon was the abuse of the IRS to pursue political enemies. This is a high crime. This is not a triviality.”

Jeanine Pirro, host of the Fox News show “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” recently blasted Obama for his “impeachable” handling of various issues.

Earlier she uncorked a blistering verbal assault on Obama in connection with his handling of the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, and the subsequent cover-up.

“Mr. President, it’s called an abrogation of duty,” Pirro said. “You have not taken your oath to honestly and faithfully execute the duties of your office. As commander in chief, you have NOT protected us. This dereliction of duty as commander in chief demands your impeachment.”

Former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., said, “I call upon the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives; Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to draft articles of impeachment.”

Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano supported West’s opinion.

“We have a federal statute which makes it a felony to provide material assistance to any terrorist organization. It could be money, maps, professional services, any asset whatsoever, include human assets,” he said.

Earlier, Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor who brought the evidence that convicted perpetrators of the first Islamic terror bombing of New York’s World Trade Center, said Obama likely broke the federal law against supporting terror.

“This was about emptying out Guantanamo,” he said. “This was a backdoor deal. The reasons for it, the details of it will probably never come out in its entirety, but this is an ugly story.

“It was really bad form for him not to at least call in the chair and ranking member of the intel or armed services committee and tell them what he was about to do with regard to the release of these prisoners,” he said. “It’s an example of how this president only obeys the laws and follows the policies that he wants to. In our Constitution, it falls under the category of high crimes and misdemeanors, where you just selectively obey certain laws and ignore others.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin:

“Impeachable Offenses” by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, outlines multiple grounds for action that could be taken against Obama.

It has been called a blueprint for impeaching Obama, outlining the high crimes, misdemeanors, bribery and other offenses committed against the U.S. Constitution.

The Obama administration recklessly endangered the public by releasing from prison criminal illegal aliens at a rate far beyond what is publicly known.

The president’s personal role in the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, with new evidence regarding what was transpiring at the U.S. mission prior to the assault – arguably impeachable activities in and of themselves.

Illicit edicts on gun control in addition to the deadly “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation intended, the book shows, to collect fraudulent gun data, and more.

“But White House lies about Benghazi are only the tip of what is really a very large impeachment iceberg,” he wrote in a commentary on WND. “We will hear many pundits say that whatever the truth of what happened in Benghazi, it’s ‘only politics’ to lie about foreign events during an election campaign, and so, it’s not a scandal on the scale of Watergate. That argument misses the point that what Benghazi and Watergate have in common: What brought Nixon down was not the crime but the cover-up. And when it comes to cover-ups, Obama and his team make Nixon look like a rank amateur.”

He continued: “There is a pattern here of abuse of power through the deliberate disregard of constitutional norms and standards. And what makes that pattern so egregious and dangerous is the participation of a partisan media that actively supports and condones the ongoing cover-ups of Obama’s arrogant disregard of the Constitution.”

U.S. Senate candidate Mark Callahan, who recently called out a reporter who apparently was disrespectful to another candidate, according to Now Renew America, has signed a “Pledge to Impeach. It calls for members of Congress to agree to “acknowledge that my sworn oath of office, if I am elected, will require me” to “support the initiation of House impeachment proceedings against President Barack Hussein Obama, and his inner circle.”

“Now we have the Benghazi select committee, and a select committee is what you form when there may be crimes and misdemeanors to uncover,” he pointed out.

“It has no other business to distract it, and it will be led by Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor who excels at channeling conservatives’ outrage,” Waldman wrote. “To be clear, this doesn’t mean that [House Speaker John] Boehner or the party establishment he represents want impeachment, not by any means. They realize what a political disaster it was when they did it in 1998, and they understand that the effects would likely be similar if it happened again.”

But Waldman wrote that “there are multiple Republican members of Congress who have at least toyed with the idea, and the committee’s hearings could build pressure in the Republican base for it.”

Among the people who have raised the prospect of impeachment are Watergate reporter Bob Woodard, actor Steven Seagal, Ambassador Alan Keyes, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Oliver North, the former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel first known for his testimony as a National Security Council staff member under President Reagan.

“Tragically, this administration has gotten away with things that any other president would have been impeached for,” North said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

Seagal, whose dozens of films feature action and violence but also have an underlying theme of seeking justice, said Obama would be impeached if the truth about the Benghazi attack was revealed.

His charge came Feb. 22 in an appearance at the Western Conservative Conference in Phoenix

“Never in my life did I ever believe that our country would be taken over by people like the people who are running it this day,” said Seagal.

“I think that when we have a leadership that thinks the Constitution of the United States of America is a joke, when we have a president who has almost 1,000 executive orders now, when we have a Department of Justice that thinks that any kind of a judicial system that they make up as they are going along can get by with whatever they decide that they want to do – like Ted Nugent said the Fast and the Furious, what’s happening with the Fast and the Furious? What’s happened with the truth about any of the greatest scandals of American history that have happened right before our eyes?” Seagal said.

“If the truth about Benghazi were to come out now, I don’t think that this man would make it through his term. I think he would be impeached,” he said.

As WND reported, Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely said it’s time for millions of Americans to “stand up” to a federal government that is “conducting treason … violating the Constitution, violating our laws.”

He’s calling for marches, a legislative vote of “no confidence” in President Obama and congressional leaders, even citizen arrests, drawing inspiration from the 33 million Egyptians who stood up to their government and removed Muslim Brotherhood officials from office.

The impeachment drive has been fueled by Georgetown professor Jonathan Turley’s congressional testimony.

The liberal professorhas represented members of Congress in a lawsuit over the Libyan war, represented workers at the secret Area 51 military base and served as counsel on national security cases. He now says Obama is a danger to the U.S. Constitution.

He was addressing a House Judiciary Committee hearing Dec. 4. Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., asked him: “Professor Turley, the Constitution, the system of separated powers is not simply about stopping one branch of government from usurping another. It’s about protecting the liberty of Americans from the dangers of concentrated government power. How does the president’s unilateral modification of act[s] of Congress affect both the balance of power between the political branches and the liberty interests of the American people?”

Turley replied: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power.”

Congress already is addressing charges that Obama is violating the Constitution.

WND reported when Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said Obama’s actions have reached “an unprecedented level, and we’ve got to do something about it.”

“Assume that a statute said you had to provide two forms of ID to vote. Can the president require three forms? Can the president require one form? Can you suspend all requirements? If not, why not?” he said. “If you can turn off certain categories of law, do you not also have the power to turn off all categories of law?”

Gowdy cited Obama’s decisions to ignore certain immigration laws, even though Congress did not approve the changes. He also cited arbitrary changes to the Obamacare law and Obama’s “recess appointments” of judges even though the U.S. Senate was not in recess.

His proposal is for Congress to take the White House to court over the president’s actions, through a resolution proposed by Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., that would authorize the House to sue the Obama administration. It has 118 co-sponsors.

Rice said that because of “this disregard of our country’s checks and balances, many of you have asked me to bring legal action against the president.”

“After carefully researching the standing the House of Representatives has and what action we can take, I have introduced a resolution to stop the president’s clear overreach,” he said.

“Why not?” asked Gowdy, “If you can turn off immigration laws, if you can turn off the mandatory minimum in our drug statutes, if you can turn off the so-called Affordable Care Act – why not election laws?”

WND reported that it was at the same hearing that Michael Cannon, director of Health Policy Studies for the Cato Institute, said there is “one last thing to which the people can resort if the government does not respect the restraints that the Constitution places of the government.”

“Abraham Lincoln talked about our right to alter our government or our revolutionary right to overthrow it,” he said.

“That is certainly something that no one wants to contemplate. If the people come to believe that the government is no longer constrained by the laws, then they will conclude that neither are they.”

Cannon said it is “very dangerous” for the president to “wantonly ignore the laws, to try to impose obligations upon people that the legislature did not approve.”

Several members of Congress also contributed their opinions in an interview with talk-show host Sean Hannity.

See the Hannity segment:

Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh says Obama won’t be impeached. But Limbaugh also is making the case that the Constitution is in crisis, an emergency for which the founders probably created the impeachment process.

“You can’t impeach the first black president,” he said on his radio show recently. “No matter how corrupt or lawless.”

But he said the danger is very high, citing Boehner’s recent comments that the House wouldn’t adopt amnesty legislation this year because the president probably wouldn’t follow it.

“This is the president of the United States effectively nullifying the legislative branch of government,” an outraged Limbaugh said. “He’s basically saying … and he has in practically these words, said this, ‘I got a pen and I got a phone and if they don’t do what I want I’m going to it anyway.’

“That’s not a ho-hummer to me. That is major. If the chartered body in our government that makes the law decides not to because they don’t think it’ll matter, because the executive branch will just ignore it, I mean that’s a breach of serious proportion,” he said.

“That is a constitutional challenge and crisis that is very real that nobody apparently has the courage to do anything about because of the president’s race,” he said.

“When Rush Limbaugh says that ‘efforts to try to have Obama impeached or held personally responsible for these scandals is a bunch of wasted effort,’ he is saying that, on account of the politics of our times, this fundamental aspect of the U.S. Constitution no longer matters. With all due respect to Rush Limbaugh (and my respect for him is sizable and sincere), I beg to differ. The judgment about ‘wasted effort’ depends on what we’re trying to achieve. If politics is just a partisan game, with no goal but to score points for one side or the other, it may be reasonable to conclude that impeachment is a wasted effort. After all, the Democrats who control the U.S. Senate will never allow Obama to be removed from office. Doesn’t this make impeachment impossible? ”

He continued: “Mr. Limbaugh is right to assume that impeachment is inherently political. In this respect his view accords with that of Alexander Hamilton, who wrote (in Federalist No. 65) that ‘… the subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed … from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.'”

But Keyes said: “The difference between Limbaugh and Hamilton, however, is that when Mr. Limbaugh speaks of politics he is referring to the competition of partisan factions. But for Hamilton politics means the business of citizens, i.e., individuals characterized by their concern for the common good of their society as a whole, not just their own personal, factional, partisan interests. From Hamilton’s perspective, the way elected representatives handle such offenses is therefore a test of their concern for the common good. If they act, or refuse to act, based solely on whether by doing so they advance their personal or factional agenda, they show their contempt for the well-being of the nation as a whole. They thereby prove themselves unfit for the offices (duties) they hold, whether or not they are ever called to account for their dereliction.”

A recent comment was from Rep. Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican who was seeking to replace the retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss.

A video from a forum featuring candidates for Chambliss’ seat shows Broun and two others, Derrick Grayson, an engineer, and Eugene Yu, a businessman, raising their hands when asked whether they would support impeachment.

A forum moderator asked the candidates: “Obama has perjured himself on multiple occasions. Would you support impeachment if presented for a vote?”

Stockman even handed out in Congress copies of a book that has been described by its authors as the “articles of impeachment” for Barack Obama. Stockman suggested that special investigations and possibly prosecutions are needed in response to Fast and Furious, Benghazi and other Obama scandals.

Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, was speaking at a town hall meeting when he considered the idea. A video of his comments was posted at the Western Center for Journalism.

“I’ve looked at the president. I think he’s violated the Constitution. I think he’s violated the Bill of Rights,” he said.

He said at some point a decision must be made.

“I think if the House had an impeachment vote, it would probably impeach the president.”

But he noted there are only 46 members of the GOP in the U.S. Senate, where an impeached president would be put on trial.

To obtain a conviction, the prosecuting team must have 67 votes, and he wasn’t sure even all of the GOP members would vote to convict.

Speaking at the Muskogee Civic Center in Oklahoma, the senator said, “What you have to do is you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president, and that’s called impeachment.”

Coburn said it’s “not something you take lightly, and you have to use a historical precedent of what that means.”

Earlier, Bentivolio said it would be a “dream come true” to impeach Obama.

Bentivolio told the Birmingham Bloomfield Republican Club Meeting, “You know, if I could write that bill and submit it, it would be a dream come true.”

He told constituents: “I feel your pain and I know. I stood 12 feet away from that guy and listened to him, and I couldn’t stand being there. But because he is president I have to respect the office. That’s my job as a congressman. I respect the office.”

Bentivolio said his experience with the president caused him to consult with attorneys about what it would take to remove Obama from office.

Cruz responded to a question about impeachment after a speech.

“It’s a good question,” Cruz said. “And I’ll tell you the simplest answer: To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate.”

In May, Inhofe suggested Obama could be impeached over a White House cover-up after the attack in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

He told listeners of “The Rusty Humphries Show”: “Of all the great cover-ups in history – the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all the rest of them – this … is going to go down as the most egregious cover-up in American history.”

But even with that searing indictment, Inhofe stopped short of calling for impeachment.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, has offered tentative support for impeachment.

“I’m not willing to take it off the table, but that’s certainly not what we’re striving for,” he told CNN.

One Republican actually has come out and called for the impeachment of Obama, and he did it more than two years ago, before he became a congressman.

Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., posted on his website in June 2011 a list of reasons for impeachment.

Other figures who have discussed impeachment include Glenn Beck, Watergate investigative reporter Bob Woodward, WND columnist Nat Hentoff and a panel of top constitutional experts.

Woodward said: “If you read through all these emails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, ‘Oh, let’s not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al Qaida. Let’s not tell the public that there were warnings.’ And I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, ‘Oh, let’s not tell this, let’s not show this.’ I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue.”

Additionally, radio host Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and one-time presidential candidate, predicted Obama won’t serve out his second term because of his complicity in a cover-up over Benghazi.